Let's Share Our Failures Not Our Successes!

Stop sharing only the things that went well! Start sharing your failures instead! I wholeheartedly agree with David Duchovny that there is more to learn from failure than from success. So why are we so obsessed with sharing mostly useless (and often fake) success stories?

As actor David Duchovny eloquently puts it:

In my life, I’ve never learned anything from something that went well. I only learned through failing either personally or professionally.
– David Duchovny

Our obsession with success stories is harmful. It limits growth. It prevents learning.

The Spotify Example

Do you remember the hype around The Spotify Model (Tribes and Squads)? It was all a lie!

To this day, you can read on the official Spotify Engineering website how great their model for organizing teams around tribes and squads is. And countless blog posts around the web are parroting the supposed benefits of this approach.

Yet, it turns out, Spotify never fully implemented the Spotify Model successfully. How many “revolutionary” approaches like this have you seen fail in practice?

There is a huge gap between what people say and write works (via official blog articles, conference talks, LinkedIn posts, you name it) and what really works in practice.

I’m guilty of this myself—and I’ll own it. There are many blog articles on my blog that now, after gathering more real-world experience, I vehemently disagree with. Sometimes I think of them and plan to revise them or at least add a warning at the beginning of the post. But as we all know, there is always something more important to do.

The Spotify example illustrates a broader problem in our industry: the inherent unreliability of success stories.

Don’t Trust Success Stories!

Even when not straight-up deceiving, success stories always paint a rosier picture than reality. But why? Why don’t we share failures? Simple: we’ve created a culture that punishes vulnerability.

Typically, when we’re thinking up this new architecture, technique, or organizational structure, we’re all excited and feel the urge to share this superior idea with the world. In the moment, everything makes so much sense that it just has to be right. Furthermore, early signs all point in the right direction. And we’ve already rolled out 80% of it with great success, how hard can the last 20% be?

As we all know: the last 20% can be very hard! The road from theory to practice is rocky. Yet, when things don’t turn out as we imagined them, our motivation to share this failure is abysmal. Even worse: most of the time we even have a hard time acknowledging our failure. Our idea is still great, if only people would be less resistant to change.

Again and again I have experienced how supposed success stories are blasted across all channels, but when things take a wrong turn there is nothing but silence. And I came to the conclusion: Big success stories shared on corporate blogs, tech conferences, or worst of all, LinkedIn, are inherently untrustworthy and definitely shouldn’t be followed blindly!

If success stories are so problematic, what’s the alternative? The answer is simple but uncomfortable.

Share Your Failures!

Now there are two parts to this: 1) people sharing those faux success stories and 2) people blindly following them. Most of us, myself included, are guilty of both.

I think we should turn this on its head! Let’s share our failures! And let’s talk about what went wrong and how we overcame these challenges.

And for the second part: Don’t trust any official blog posts or conference talks but listen to what the developers in the trenches have to say on Reddit or in Hacker News comments!

For example: are you thinking about adopting the Spotify Model in your company? Or have you read about the great success that is the Spotify Microfrontend architecture and want to implement it yourself? Why not reach out to (ex) Spotify employees first and listen to what they have to say?

You’ll find stories about how the Squad-based organization or their famous Microfrontend approach have failed them.

Note: it’s pure coincidence that I only use examples from Spotify here. Turns out their developers are most open about sharing their experience at Spotify.

These real-world examples from Spotify demonstrate the value of hearing from those who experienced the supposed successes firsthand.

Wrapping It Up

We all know from personal experience that failures have a much higher educational potential than successes. Yet, we keep ignoring this knowledge and keep sharing mostly our own success stories and absorbing success stories of other people and companies.

It’s time we flip this on its head! Proudly share your failures and how you overcame them, and be skeptical when reading about this new architectural or organizational approach that finally fixes all of our problems. Wait a couple of months or years for the full story to emerge, and reach out to current or former employees to get to the truth of the matter.